First of all, thanks to all who gave me advice about the mortising machine from the last blog. I did hone and tune the chisel and mortise machine and it did cut considerably better. I also turned the chisel so that the open side faces the previously bored section and didn’t have any trouble with chips getting stuck (thanks Betsy!)

So I made the layout lines on my legs:

And cut the mortises. Notice the stop block for repeatability:

I was wondering how I would go about cutting the tenons. I decided to just do it the “easy way” and cut them on my radial arm saw (I love that thing.)

It takes a little while to hog out the waste with a thin kerf blade but there is almost no set-up time. Call me lazy but it works for me. It would have taken me just as long to set up a jig for my router or whatever other method.

A roughed tenon:

I made marks 1/2” from each edge of the tenons:

And I cut the notch out on the bandsaw (what is the correct terminology for this part of the tenon?):

I spent quite a bit of time chiseling the tenons…

...and cleaning out the mortises:

I also used my “Record” low angle shoulder plane to fit, smooth, and square up the tenons:

The finished tenons (aaahhhhh, at last.)

Finally, at 2:00 AM in the morning (on my Birthday!) I dry-fit the joinery. I didn’t start until after work last night.

And it looks exactly like it did at the end of the last section :( But I know that a big part of the work is done :)

I will disassemble it and do all the shaping (leg tapers and arches) before gluing it. But I had to see how it all fit together. Geez, that wood is nice, isn’t it? I never took Birch seriously before. I always used it for making jigs because it is hard and relatively cheap.

This phase took about 5 hours.
Total Project Time So Far: 10 hours

I have the day off tomorrow. Check back later… I expect to make quite a bit more progress (after I sleep in).

This is coming along nicely. Out of curiosity why didn’t you put a dado set in your RAS? It would have made hogging out waste much faster. But you did well with just the thin kerf blade and plane. At this rate you may just make it by the 21st.

By the way happy birthday to you as well. After 16, 18 and 21 they don’t mean as much but it still is your special day. :)

-- Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful- Joshua Marine

Scott Bryan: My good ol’ DeWalt R.A.S. is not really that powerful and has a hard time cutting with anything wider than a thin kerf blade. A dado would be really slow going and would probably stall the saw.

happy B-day blake. man that is some beautiful flame birch. i just love that stuff. i worked with it once and it is a really beautiful wood but it had no where near that figure. it just amazes me every time that i see it. thanks for the post!